Touch
by Dickensian812
Summary: The events of "Beta" from Grace's point of view. Usual disclaimers.
1. Prologue

Prologue

_Move on._

It's what her friends have been telling her for months now. _Get out more. Try new things. Go see the world! You can do anything you want._

Which isn't strictly true, of course, as she wants nothing more than to turn the calendar back four years and lock Harold inside and throw away the key, before he could . . . before he could go . . . there.

But she can't do that. And there's no reason she has to stay here in this house for the rest of her life, right? That's what they keep saying. She needs to do something adventurous. Go someplace wild. Try for a job somewhere else—like . . . Italy?

"I think you all just want to get rid of me," she said, half-teasingly, half-protestingly, to the friend who told her about the job opportunity.

"You know we'd miss you," the friend said, frankly. "But I think it would be good for you. Change of scenery, a chance to—you know—start over. Try something new."

Grace turned her head away a little so the friend couldn't see her mouthing the final words of the old familiar speech along with her. "_Move on._"

But in the end, she couldn't think of any good arguments against it. So she sent in her application.

And now here she is, luggage collected by the front door, hands shoved deep into her pockets. Waiting. At the ring of the bell she swallows involuntarily, trying to keep her stomach from jumping up into her throat, and resists the urge to cast one last wistful glance around her. _Don't look back._

She opens the door for the driver, tugs her bags out to the step for him, steps out into the crisp night air, trying not to think about anything past this moment. Closing the door firmly behind her, she follows him down the steps, making polite small talk. _Look ahead. Straight ahead. Don't look back. _

Carefully she places her precious paintings against the car. The driver says something about getting her Web address for his daughter who likes to paint, and automatically she digs in her purse for a card. _Stay focused_. _You're doing fine. Don't look_—

And then the night explodes around her.


	2. Fight

Fight

It all seems to happen in less than a second. A low voice, not the driver's, speaks just behind her—she's so startled she doesn't catch what it's saying—and suddenly there's the sound of fists hitting flesh, and grunts, and as she whirls, she sees her own suitcase striking the driver. He crumples to the ground, revealing to her the slight, dark-haired woman who knocked him down with it.

And suddenly it's quiet again and she's just standing there by the car door, staring at the slight woman and a tall man, who looks . . . familiar?

"Ms. Hendricks?" The man is a little breathless from the fight. He holds up a badge. "I'm Detective Stills. We met before, do you remember?"

Grace's eyes are huge as she huddles against the car. His voice sounds oddly gentle for a man who just started World War III behind her—but then, he _is_ a detective. It's coming back to her now—the soft-spoken man who checked in on her after a false alarm, here at the house. But . . .

"Where did you come from?" Her voice comes out as something between a wail and a squeak.

He doesn't seem to hear the question. There's a grim focus in the eyes fastened on hers. "My partner and I need to get you to a safe place."

"This man works for a very dangerous criminal organization," the woman breaks in. "And others are on their way. So we need to hurry." She reaches over and guides Grace away from the car with a surprisingly strong hand on her shoulder. "Emphasis on the hurry."

Grace's head spins. A moment ago—only a moment ago—she was on her way to the airport, and now . . . now she's hopping over an unconscious body on the sidewalk as Detective Stills and the woman lead her—where?

And _why?_


	3. Secret

Secret

"I don't understand," Grace says hoarsely, as the little group emerges from the subway. The way Stills and the woman—whom he calls "Shaw"—are constantly looking around makes her feel like someone's breathing down their necks. She's almost afraid to raise her voice above a whisper, but she can't stand it anymore. Not knowing what's going on is making her even more jittery than the thought of someone overhearing her words.

"This doesn't make any sense! Why would some criminal organization be looking for me? I'm nobody important—I—"

"It's a long story." Stills glances down at her. There's a kind of remote sympathy in his ice-blue eyes, but his words are clipped. "I'm afraid there's not much we can tell you right now. What's important is getting you to safety."

They're approaching a well-lit brick building surrounded by vehicles. Police cars, mostly. Stills glances around again—more upward than around, actually, which strikes her as strange—and herds her to his other side, the side further away from the lights. As they head toward the short flight of steps at the front, Shaw jogs up and touches him on the elbow.

"Hey—does Fusco know who she—"

Stills whips around and fixes Shaw with a glare that makes Grace take a step back. If she were receiving the full force of that look, she'd be a heap of ashes on the sidewalk.

Shaw doesn't incinerate, but she looks a little embarrassed. "Sorry," she mutters. "I forgot."

"Don't forget." That's all Stills says, but something in his tone makes Grace decide not to ask, "Forget _what?_"

They climb the steps in silence.


	4. Ordinary

Ordinary

The stocky man in the brown suit who comes forward to meet them in the police station is scowling. Stills talks quietly with him for a moment, holds up his badge.

"You're killing me with that," the man snaps, scowling harder.

Grace is too tired and bewildered by now to try to comprehend this. When Stills introduces the man as Lionel, she can only blurt out, "I don't know what's going on. But these detectives saved my life."

"Yeah, they're good at that," Lionel acknowledges.

Grace looks at him—at his rumpled brown suit and curly brown hair and tired eyes. The scowl is gone, now, his expression hovering somewhere between wariness and kindness. There is something so reassuringly ordinary about him, after the almost superhuman efficiency of the other two, that she suddenly wants to cry.

She swallows the sob in her throat and goes with him without a word, after he gently takes her arm.

"Are they always like that?" she asks Lionel confidentially, after he's settled her in a small, dim room and brought her a cup of coffee ("it's lousy but it's warm").

Lionel chuckles understandingly. "I know they come off a little stiff. But—they've saved my life dozens of times." As she takes this in, he reaches for the doorknob. "Trust me. They're the good guys."

He goes out and closes the door, leaving Grace gazing after him. _Trust me_, he'd said.

She bites her lip, and looks down thoughtfully at the warm cup pressed between her hands. Trust is not something that comes easily to her. But she feels drawn toward Lionel Fusco, somehow. Maybe it's not so surprising after the night she's had. Maybe it's his sheer blessed ordinariness that makes her _want_ to trust him.

Or maybe it's just that she has no other choice.


	5. Stills

Stills

For a time Grace just sits at the table where Lionel left her, staring straight ahead without seeing anything. Her mind is struggling to put together a puzzle with most of the pieces missing, and no picture to guide her.

_Stills attacking her driver out of nowhere . . . "a dangerous criminal organization" . . . Lionel's wary expression . . . half-caught words and bitten-off phrases that don't work in any context she can think of . . ._

It's no use. She can't make any of it fit.

She shifts restlessly in her chair, rubs her neck, and gradually her eyes focus on what's on the wall before her. A bulletin board, covered with a snowfall of papers. And on one of them, a name she knows.

Slowy Grace rises and walks over to the bulletin board. She lifts another paper out of the way, and there it is: "MISSING: DET. JAMES STILLS."

Right under the words is a picture of a man who is most decidedly not the man she knows as Det. James Stills.

Grace's breath catches in her throat, as the partially formed puzzle in her mind shatters into a million shards.


	6. Forgotten

Forgotten

Lionel Fusco looks flabbergasted as Grace storms into the hallway, brandishing the "MISSING" poster.

"How is Detective Stills 'one of the good guys,'" she spits out, "when he's not even Detective Stills?"

Not waiting for a reply—not that it looked like one was forthcoming—she drops the poster on top of the box he's carrying and turns on her heel. Enough. She still doesn't have a clue what's going on, but she's not going to sit around here trying to figure it out. Not when she's being lied to.

"Hendricks, Grace R."

Grace reels back. A woman has materialized in front of her as if from thin air, smiling confidently. A woman whose long brown hair and small, pointed features trigger something far back in her memory. She grasps for it but can't quite reach . . .

"B.F.A., Rhode Island School of Design," the strange woman rattles off as if reading from a résumé. "M.F.A., Yale. You're a smart lady. So listen to what happens when you walk out that door."

Grace's eyes automatically flick in that direction at the sound of the word. But her mind is still wrestling with the problem right in front of her. She knows this face. She's met this woman. They talked . . . _Something about . . . children's books? No. That can't be right! But . . ._

"If you're not shot by one of three former force recon scout snipers," the woman is continuing, smoothly, "you'll be grabbed by some lummox named Zachary in an SUV with bogus Ohio plates. A fate far worse than the lies being told to protect you in this room."

Completely lost, Grace glances helplessly around at Fusco, who's come up behind her. "Believe it or not," he says, with an odd air of reluctance, "she's one of the good guys too."

Grace's stomach drops. If these are the good guys . . . what chance does she have, no matter what she does?


	7. John

John

The tall man who _isn't _Stills is back, along with his partner. They're standing in the hallway with Fusco and the strange woman, who still doesn't appear to have a name. Grace heard Fusco call her "Looney Tunes" a little while ago, but she's pretty sure that doesn't count.

The four of them are talking urgently, in low voices, and—Grace senses—occasionally glancing over at her. She herself is sitting at another table, in another room, staring at her hands. She doesn't want to see any more posters; if they have more secrets to reveal, she's starting to realize she doesn't want to know about them.

She lifts her head as a shadow falls over her. The tall man has detached himself from the group and is standing near her, his face inscrutable as ever.

"Grace," he says, "we're going to need you to come with us again. It's not safe here anymore. We have to get you to a different location, and we have to do it now."

Grace studies him for a moment.

"What's your real name?" she asks.

That gets him; he starts, just the tiniest start, and looks at her sharply. She can almost see the questions whirling in his mind. She can also see the moment when he decides they don't really matter.

"Call me John," he says, at last.

Grace looks back down at her hands, sighs, pushes back her chair. "Well, John," she says quietly, "I don't seem to have a choice, do I?"


End file.
